High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic

It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon was shot on a lean budget over just 32 days but achieved instant box-office and critical success. It won four Academy Awards in 1953, including a best actor win for Cooper. And it became a cultural touchstone, often cited by politicians as a favourite film, celebrating moral fortitude.

The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris

In the town of San Pedro in the Dominican Republic, baseball is not just a way of life. It's the way of life. By the year 2008, 79 boys and men from San Pedro had gone on to play in the Major Leagues - that means one in six Dominican Republicans who have played in the Majors have come from one tiny, impoverished region. Manny Alexander, Sammy Sosa, Tony Fernandez, and legions of other San Pedro players who came up in the sugar mill teams flocked to the United States.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

In The Idea Factory, New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner reveals how Bell Labs served as an incubator for scientific innovation from the 1920s through the1980s. In its heyday, Bell Labs boasted nearly 15,000 employees, 1200 of whom held PhDs and 13 of whom won Nobel Prizes. Thriving in a work environment that embraced new ideas, Bell Labs scientists introduced concepts that still propel many of today’s most exciting technologies.

The Arms of Krupp: 1587-1968

The Arms of Krupp brings to life Europe's wealthiest, most powerful family, a 400-year German dynasty that developed the world's most technologically advanced weapons, from cannons to submarines to antiaircraft guns; provided arms to generations of German leaders, including the Kaiser and Hitler; operated private concentration camps during the Nazi era; survived conviction at Nuremberg; and wielded enormous influence on the course of world events.

I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford and the Most Important Car Ever Made

In many ways, Henry Ford's story is well-known; in many more ways, it is not. Richard Snow masterfully weaves together a fascinating narrative of Ford's rise to fame through his greatest invention, the Model T. A highly pleasurable listen, filled with scenes and incidents from Ford's life, I Invented the Modern Age shows Richard Snow at the height of his powers as a popular historian and reclaims from history Henry Ford, the remarkable man who, indeed, invented the modern world as we know it.

Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon

In August 1968 NASA made a bold decision: In just 16 weeks, the United States would launch humankind's first flight to the moon. Only the year before, three astronauts had burned to death in their spacecraft, and since then the Apollo program had suffered one setback after another. Meanwhile, the Russians were winning the space race, the Cold War was getting hotter by the month, and President Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade seemed sure to be broken.

African Kaiser: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa, 1914-1918

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the continent of Africa was a hotbed of international trade, colonialism, and political gamesmanship. So when World War I broke out, the European powers were forced to contend with each other not just in the bloody trenches - but in the treacherous jungle. And it was in that unforgiving land that General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck would make history.

The Reformation: A History

At a time when men and women were prepared to kill - and be killed - for their faith, the Protestant Reformation tore the Western world apart. Acclaimed as the definitive account of these epochal events, Diarmaid MacCulloch's award-winning history brilliantly recreates the religious battles of priests, monarchs, scholars, and politicians - from the zealous Martin Luther and his 95 Theses to the polemical John Calvin to the radical Igantius Loyola, from the tortured Thomas Cranmer to the ambitious Philip II.

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. Holding guards and civilian employees hostage, the prisoners negotiated with officials for improved conditions during the four long days and nights that followed. On September 13, the state abruptly sent hundreds of heavily armed troopers and correction officers to retake the prison by force. Their gunfire killed 39 men - hostages as well as prisoners.

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia, combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to crucially recast the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia. We see how industrial capitalism then reshaped these worlds of cotton into an empire, and how this empire transformed the world.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

In the 1920s the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation.

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die.

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company's ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber. Outbound ships carried little more than soldiers and firearms. Correctly concluding that only slave labor could account for these cargoes, Morel almost singlehandedly made this slave-labor regime the premier human rights story in the world.

The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire

How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat - until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country.

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America

Behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did.

No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes

In a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces in vivid detail the lives of three Afghans caught in America's war on terror. He follows a Taliban commander who rises from scrawny teenager to leading insurgent, a U.S.-backed warlord who uses the American military to gain personal wealth and power, and a village housewife trapped between the two sides who discovers the devastating cost of neutrality.

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infested Siberia. He came up with a radical vision of nature, that it was a complex and interconnected global force and did not exist for man's use alone. Ironically, his ideas have become so accepted and widespread that he has been nearly forgotten.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.

Lucy and Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple

After eight years on the air, Desi Arnaz did not love Lucy any more. On screen, they were dynamite, a comedy pairing more successful than any Hollywood had ever produced. But when the cameras stopped rolling, they fought, screamed and threatened each other more each season. Finally, an argument in Desi's production office turned violent. Lucy hurled a cocktail glass past his head, and Desi demanded a divorce. He moved out that night. After nearly 20 years, America's favorite couple was finished.

The Best and the Brightest

Using portraits of America's flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country's recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam, and why did we lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It is an American classic.

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947

In the aftermath of World War II, Prussia - a centuries-old state pivotal to Europe's development - ceased to exist. In their eagerness to erase all traces of the Third Reich from the earth, the Allies believed that Prussia, the very embodiment of German militarism, had to be abolished. But as Christopher Clark reveals in this pioneering history, Prussia's legacy is far more complex.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces, including the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement and the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities.

Audible Editor Reviews

Fordlandia is a wide-ranging history not only of Henry Ford’s problem-plagued foray into the Amazonian rainforest, but also of his place in advancing mechanized manufacturing. While the jungle experience did not make a lasting imprint on the Ford Company’s existence, the perfection of assembly-line processes, the invention of machines to replace workers, and Henry Ford’s desire to control all facets of his automobile production process certainly combined to change the way goods are manufactured and life for workers around the world. Jonathan Davis aptly takes listeners through the story as the book first details Henry Ford’s rise to world prominence through the debacle of Fordlandia, and finally to Ford’s legacy of multinational corporations and mechanized labor.

The experience of Fordlandia brings forth Davis’ many skills as a gifted narrator. While his even voice tells the tale, he offers engaging and enjoyable moments as he describes various characters who helped make Ford’s poorly thought-out excursion into virgin rainforest the misery that it was. Davis reads excerpts from the letters botantist Carl LaRue sent to Henry Ford from Brazil, detailing the forlorn existence of the natives who would, supposedly, benefit from Ford’s insistence on a workforce that adhered to his personal Puritan values. Davis also reads the poetry of George Washington Sears, whose work describes a Brazilian workers revolt, and of Elizabeth Bishop, who put the Amazon Rivers untouched beauty into verse.

Mostly though, Davis introduces listeners to the wheelers and dealers who finessed the Brazilian land deal. According to author Grandin, that deal “snookered” the richest man in the world into paying for land he could have gotten for free. Later, Davis voices upper- and mid-level Ford managers who saw opportunities for money and power in time spent at the struggling Amazonian rubber plantation.

Fordlandia has it all: from American ingenuity, pride, wealth, and stubbornness to the tendency of some towards exploitation, greed, and nativism. Davis gives voice to Grandin’s words as he describes that moment in American history when the country changed from being mostly agrarian pioneers to factory workers; When American businessmen and factory owners began looking farther than the shores of the United States and saw income possibilities in foreign countries. Fordlandia ultimately relates how badly Henry Ford’s arrogance was shattered by the natural forces of the jungle: from the building of Cape Cod-style housing in cleared rainforest tracts to insisting on rainforest natives using a factory time clock  it simply did not work. Anyone interested in a preview of the U.S. role in Latin America will welcome Grandin’s book and Davis’ narration. Carole Chouinard

Publisher's Summary

In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself. Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, soon became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the lean, austere car magnate; on the other, the Amazon, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Indigenous workers rejected Ford's midwestern Puritanism, turning the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. And his efforts to apply a system of regimented mass production to the Amazon's diversity resulted in a rash environmental assault that foreshadowed many of the threats laying waste to the rain forest today.

More than a parable of one man’s arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Greg Grandin's Fordlandia is "a quintessentially American fable". (Time).

Suffice it to say that they don't say anything about this chapter of Henry Ford's life in his hometown of Dearborn, where I spent a lot of time in my childhood. Grandin depicts a man filled with hubris who seemed to think he couldn't fail at anything he tried. Yet, he failed miserably with Fordlandia, his attempt to build a worker's paradise in the Amazon -- not least because he couldn't be bothered to visit the place himelf - not even once - and was incredibly short-sighted about the realities of transferring Dearborn to the jungle. What is perhaps even more disturbing is that much of the ignorance that characterized his decisions about Fordlandia was also present in the way he ran his operations back home and saw his own place in the world. It's a tribute to the men and women that came after him that Ford Motor Co. itself has not gone the way of Fordlandia. A short note aobut the narrator -- although his reading is a bit slow and halting, as some reviewers have noted, his pronunciation of the Brazilian words and place names is impressive and really enhanced my listening experience.

I thought this was an interesting story of Henry Ford trying to impose his will on the Amazon. There are many angles at work in this story. The trees, the cultures, the people. Ford may or may not have been motivated purely on business grounds. Having such success, he was very confident in all that he did. Confident that if he just did the same things that built his empire, he could build the next stage of it. A great case study of a company moving into a new location and not understanding the locals, turning what could be new allies into potential enemies. Lessons that are still applicable today.

The narrator moves at quite a slow pace and makes it a little hard to stay engaged.

Between each sentence are long pauses, and it makes the book almost impossible to get into. Because of this reading style the story loses any cadence Greg Grandin might have introduced. Listen to the sample and you will see what I mean. The whole book is like this.

This book of Henry Ford's unfortunate attempt to grow rubber and to instill his American Way of Life in the jungle of Brazil, is overly long and repetitive. Every problem is hashed to death, over and over. The history is probably fairly accurate, and occasional facts are interesting. The ending of the book about the long-term effects of industrialization is particularly sad....the devastation of the local Brazilians' way of life, and the destruction of the jungle ecosystem. This is one of the worst books I've ever slogged through.